Project Components

 FILM FILE

The Life & Go Dept. Clinic

POSTCARD

Front

Back

File Link

SOCIAL MEDIA

Instagram Page

Critical Reflection

By telling an especially odd story alongside a heartfelt, earnest message, The Life & Go Dept. Clinic develops its theme of experiencing life without holding back while keeping its audience engaged. 

The Life & Go Dept. Clinic is built on the backs of inspired productions such as The Tatami Galaxy, Mind Game, and World of Tomorrow. These specific productions were researched since they explore similar themes, and together, each helped form a concise way to explore ‘Life & Go’s’ central message. Specifically, The Tatami Galaxy features its protagonist spending endless hours trapped in a universe made up of only his room, which impacted how ‘Life & Go’ would demonstrate its protagonist doing the same but in a more grounded setting. ‘Life & Go’ was also inspired by Stephen Spielberg’s use of staging, particularly in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Spielberg uses staging to tell a story of its own, forming connections and disconnections between characters and their environment. The use of staging is evident in the pan/tilt starting on the Life & Go Dept. Clinic’s business card then sweeping up to Jim and Cricket, forming a strong association between the prop and the characters. 

Many productions with similar themes often use a voiceover to dive deeper into a character’s psyche, like Mind Game, but ‘Life & Go’ challenges this convention by conveying the Protagonist’s internal struggle using only visuals with the occasional dialogue. This is seen when the Protagonist refuses to call his grandma; through context clues and the darker lighting alongside the Protagonist writhing in bed, the audience can assess the reasoning behind his behaviors. This is also seen when the Protagonist reflects on his life with the montage of childhood pictures inspired by The Bear. Being a ‘dramedy,’ The Life & Go Dept. Clinic does conform to the conventions of certain comedy productions, like The Nice Guys. Both productions feature an abrasive, comedic buddy-cop duo: for ‘Life & Go’ this is found in Jim and Cricket. Neither character carries much dramatic depth, but in terms of genre, they aid in the film's comedic tone in balance to its dense messaging. 

The Life & Go Dept. Clinic’s target audience are young adults in the age range 17-25, finishing or starting a new education, likely having a mid-range socioeconomic status. It is common, especially modernly with the abundance of distractions and instant gratification, for life to feel aimless or distant at this age. For the average first-world citizen, that is the time when one finds what they are going to do for the rest of their lives, a daunting task that can lead someone astray from experiencing life as it is. ‘Life & Go’s’ theme is most likely to connect with young adults facing similar struggles to the Protagonist.  

Already engaging its audience with its themes, ‘Life & Go’ continues to engage with its target audience through its Instagram page. Not only is Instagram a platform that young adults typically use, but also ‘Life & Go’s’ postings emphasize engagement with younger adults. Spotify and podcasts are popular with this target audience, so a cast and crew curated Spotify playlist was created to promote engagement, and the film itself, alongside featuring the cast on the 'FilmCast' podcast and posting clips to the Instagram page. Through these and through typical social media marketing postings, like posters, behind the scenes photos, trailers, and audience participation activities, the Instagram page can engage with its young adult audience.  

The film’s postcard continues to engage its audience with its straightforward and intriguing iconography through Jim and Cricket’s faces front and center along with their business card and a striking image of a hand holding up a heart on the back. The Instagram page also featured on the postcard continues to engage the audience.

‘Life & Go’s’ brand consists of its striking iconography alongside its theme of experiencing life. The film can develop the brand to its furthest extent through the business card and heart iconography alongside the messaging explored throughout, hitting its peak in the childhood montage sequence. The film itself is a development of its brand. The social media component does develop the brand but to a lesser extent. The most that the Instagram page can develop the theme is through the tagline, “The meaning of life is the verb,” being featured wherever possible (account bio, posters) and through the trailers. This could be improved through postings discussing the theme more in-depth at length; like interviews with the cast on what they think about the messaging. However, the film’s iconography is developed adequately, with many posts featuring the heart and business card props alongside promoting the characters.  

The postcard faces a similar issue with the social media page as the film's theme is difficult to develop in the medium. Although the tagline could be used here, its inclusion may clutter the postcard too much and make it much less engaging. Still, the film’s iconography is strongly developed through the grand images of Jim and Cricket and the heart. What lacks in the theme branding, these components make up for in the iconography branding through the striking props and characters. All components are successful in working together to develop the brand; this is most evident in every component using the same font (Garamond), keeping the production's branding consistent.

Regarding representation, ‘Life & Go’ does little to represent diverse minority groups. Representation of these groups was not an inherit focus of the film, still, stronger strides could have been made in casting a more diverse cast and changing how they are represented because of it. The main subject the film does represent is the struggle of many young adults to get out of self-sabotaging habits that limit their life. While they could go out and do fulfilling things with their time, they are instead trapped in a perpetual cycle of ‘rotting’ and self-pity. ‘Life & Go’ is successful in addressing the dangerous habit of doing nothing not only by depicting the Protagonist ‘rotting’ but by also addressing the issue as a life-or-death situation. This extreme way of illustrating the issue is effective in depicting the people influenced by the represented mindset, as to them it really is life or death; either they help themselves and live life or they do not do either. 

After working on the film and its components for about two months, I am fulfilled to say The Life & Go Dept. Clinic was a success. It has its flaws: the postcard and Instagram page could have developed the brand of experiencing life better, and with more time I may have been able to do so. Still, I believe that each component was a success, I am modestly proud of my work. I was able to communicate what I wanted to communicate through the film.  

done

Last day. All I really did today was finish the critical reflection essay. Pretty good I think. I also changed the film festival on my postcard to the Florida Film Festival because I realized the Miami Film Festival has a specific focus on Ibero-American films haha. I do think mine would still be technically eligible to enter but better safe than sorry right. Feels weird to be done but I am glad that I am. I'm tired. I liked working on this I liked how the movie turned out I had fun with the other components. I hope someone gets something out of all of this, that'd be cool. Good. Good job. Nothing profound to say unfortunately. Cheers xoxoxo 

oops! all corrupted!

 This has never happened to me before but all the videos we shot this weekend for the promos were corrupted. I think? Whenever I try to play them the video just doesn't play and it will not play. I got very worried very quickly. And y'know frustrated. I tried everything and nothing worked. Then I imported the video to CapCut out of sheer lack of any other options and while the video wasn't working, the audio was!!!! THANK GOD BRO. I think it might have been a storage issue, editing the film entirely on my phone along with every other app and file on my phone has made my phone very buggy the last week or so, really I should have seen this coming. Still I didn't know what to do with only audio until the idea of a podcast dawned on me. Now a podcast is arguably much worse promo material than an interview but at least it is something. I created a podcast visualizer so I have something to post on the Instagram instead of the bare audio and honestly I don't think it turned out too bad. Good on me for doing this improvised! 

Since most of the interviews required the video to make sense (we reference physical things and such) most of the clips were still unusable. So I had to think of more social media postings, I had the idea of character specific posts, so I made them. These would introduce the characters and promote them as a part of the film. I'll start writing my essay tomorrow and finish up everything on Wednesday and it should be good!

Also updated my postcard per my teacher's (Mrs. Stoklosa, shout out) advice, making the hand holding the heart bigger and removing the title from the front.

filmed promos

 I filmed promos yesterday with Ayami and Luis and it took much less time than I was expecting so that's great. We filmed a promo that's based off of Letterboxd's interviews where they ask actors/directors their top four favorite films. It's a cute idea that I think can work for this social media account. Also filmed us answering questions like our favorite moment on set or the hypothetical future of our characters, like something you would see in a cast interview on a talk show or something. Not sure how good the audio is going to be on that because we filmed without a mic (filmed far from phone, no long-distance mic available) but crossing that bridge when I get to it. Yah simple stuff! I'll edit all the promos tomorrow and post them up until Wednesday then do a final release teaser and that's that!

We also did a photo shoot where we recreated Willem Dafoe's odd poses but I'm not doing that, it's too silly and I must control myself. Still here's Ayami and Luis doing it. This is payback for Ayami posting a horrible picture of me on her blog..

postcard development

 Made the postcard! Very straightforward. I had taken pictures during shooting day so I just used those. I did have trouble with the front, specifically with the placement of the text in correlation with the text. I wanted the image to take up the entire cover but I wasn't sure how to do that in a way that showed Jim and Cricket in an effective manner while leaving enough space for the text not to feel awkward. After a while of resizing and cropping and moving I got this:

Not too bad I think, it works. I wanted to leave it mostly empty so the front isn't overcrowded and just gets to the point, here's the title, here's some of the characters, boom, yea.

For the back I chose the Miami Film Festival as the location where the film will be showing. I'm actually not sure if I am allowed to choose whichever film festival I want so that is subject to change! I'll check with my teacher (Mrs. Stoklosa, shout out) on Monday. Liked the image of the heart being held up since it is bold and (I think) intrigues whoever has the postcard as to what the film is about since someone is just holding up a heart. I understand that faces are engaging but I think this heart image works well, I will have to re-check with my teacher (Mrs. Stoklosa, shout out) on Monday.

teaser and finishing touches on film

 I had the idea for a teaser to post on the social media account: a short voiceover before quick cuts of clips set to fast paced jazz then cutting to the title card. I think it doesn't show much of the film but still captures it in a creative manner. So I did it. I used this royalty free jazz track. I also included a quiet riser just to really polish it out and gave it a "Coming this Spring" screen at the end cause that's what teasers do. Here's the link to the teaser post.

I also took the note about the flashback given to me during the group meeting and tried to find a way to make the flashback more apparent. I tried the riser sound that was recommended to me but it sounded a bit out of place so I had the idea of putting the first sound effect heard during the flashback a little earlier as a voiceover, in this case it was a mouse clicking sound effect. I was in between the two so I asked my friends in my class, Ale and Gabi, and he mouse click voiceover was decided on, so yea! I would post it on here but I've been having issues with posting videos on blogs, don't know why unfortunately. Already made plans for cast promos on Saturday and I'll develop exactly what those promos are until then alongside the postcard tomorrow.

last group meeting

Met with some of my classmates today and we discussed each other's projects. It was a pretty solid meeting all around, we all helped each other in places we were struggling and gave advice where we could. We watched my friend, Gabi's, documentary excerpt and gave feedback on it, I said it needed music and a more concrete intro. I also showed them my "finished" film for feedback. 

Here is the feedback I got:

- Riser on flashback(?)

- Make the flashback more apparent

That was it which is INSANE. WHAT?? I really can't believe that was it. The imposter syndrome is off the walls right now what the hell bro. Okay. Ok. I'm going to try a lot of stuff to make the flashback more apparent and I'll make a blog about that. I'm also planning to make about two trailers for the social media and I'll probably make the postcard on Thursday with Instagram posting throughout the week. I think this meeting has solidified what I have to do for this week and how I'll do it. Hopefully I can film cast interviews on Saturday and edit on Sunday then post until Wednesday. Then until then I'll post pre-production stuff, then move onto trailers and the cast stuff. Working on the essay from Sunday to Wednesday. I want to make fan engagement posts on social media but I'm not sure how to do that since the ideas that I have require the viewers to have already seen the film. I asked my teacher (Mrs. Stoklosa) (Shout out) what I should do to explain the fact that audiences had already seen the film despite it technically not being released and she said to just post it, no engagement needed. Great! Cool! Yay! I'm locking in this week.

reflecting, breathing, and planning

Using this post to take a moment to reflect and breath before jumping into developing the social media more and everything else. The movie's done. It's a bit surreal how it kinda just ended up being finished. Like wow that was fairly anticlimactic. I've shown it to a few people so far including everyone who helped work on it and they all thought it was good, so that's good. I am feeling a strange sense of imposter syndrome where I don't think it is as good as people say it is but hey whatever. I think it turned out pretty swell. If I could go back and change things, I think I would have liked to cast someone else as The Protagonist. That way I can have more of a presence behind the camera than I actually did and, to be frank, I don't think I did the best job playing the character haha. I think it was really just cause of how demanding the shooting day was, to get through everything in a very limited time span. That's another thing, maybe I should have picked a day that was more free, but then again my hands were tied and it was kind of out of my control. I had fun overall. It was a good experience to have an idea, develop it, and actually make it. Job's not finished though, gotta do everything else now. No pressure really, hopefully. It's all due in a little over a week, 15-25 more social media posts and a 1000 word essay and a postcard, no pressure.

The postcard I will develop completely this week, I already took the photos for it on shooting day because I am so good at everything I do all the time. I'm thinking the front will be Jim and Cricket with the back being the Protagonist but we'll see. For the social media posts, I want to do more pictures of behind the scenes on set day before going into short trailers/teasers and press interviews/videos from the cast and crew (crew really only being me. I'm in the cast as well actually). And that'll pretty much be it. If I do end up filming some stuff with the cast I'll try to get it all done over this last weekend since that'll be the only time to do so. And the essay will probably be simple to do since I'm so ingrained into this film and have been talking about it for about a month, doing that more should be easy enough haha. And that's it! Finishing developing everything this week, see ya then.

editing day 2

 More frustrating than the last one that's for sure. I was right when I said audio would be less straightforward, this part had some kick to it. I wanted the film to open with a black screen, the sound of the heartbeat is overlaid with the sound of a timer, then the heartbeat stops as the timer continues. I think it's a cool idea that immediately just establishes a centerpiece of the film. At first the timer was more of a clock ticking but I changed to more of a kitchen timer sound later on. Did this so the sound is actually a timer instead of the ticking of some watch or clock.

A large struggle was avoiding complete silence and always having some sort of ambience playing, the absence of ambience would be super jarring so I always made sure to keep some noise on at all times. There wasn't much Foley to do since a majority of the film's audio is just dialogue with some sound effects here and there (mostly the timer and the heartbeat), additionally a lot of diegetic sound effects were picked up during filming so that spared me some blood, sweat, and tears today. There was one scene that needed a lot of Foley to pull off and that is the montage sequence of the Protagonist rotting in his room before Cricket and Jim arrive. First thing I added to this sequence was the diegetic sound of keyboard typing, mouse clicking, and audio from the phone, but I knew it would not be enough. I needed some sort of nondiegetic audio to be played in the cuts and throughout. That's when the idea came to me to use wind sound effects to emphasize the emptiness of the sequence. It's so devoid of life, the sound of wind really helps emphasize this so that was a great idea by me good job me. I also added a fly buzzing sound effect when it cuts to the rotten apple. This sequence was mainly inspired by Edgar Wright's style of quick cuts in a montage sequence (here's two videos showing what I mean, from The World's End  and Shaun of the Dead). Though, looking back, I should have reviewed how he does it more closely since he uses zooms while I did not at all. Mine still turned out swell anyways I think.

Audio was pretty straightforward until the scene of the protagonist looking at his body being carried. This. Damn. Scene. I had no clue what to do for the audio. At first I thought I'd put some guitar over it as nondiegetic track but no matter how many variations of guitar I would play and put over it, it just wouldn't fit. This took so long. I could not crack the code. After God knows how many hours, I watched the scene in silence, no audio, then realized that it works fine with no soundtrack. ughibfdjk,b. Cool. I put the same wind sound effect over it to really give it that dreadful feeling of being dead and reflecting on your life. Then came the crawling scene and once again I was met with the realization that this scene needed a soundtrack over it. This one actually needed it by the way it didn't really work too well with just diegetic sound. So I played my guitar over and over and over until I got one chord progression that I liked and boom! It kind just worked. Yay! For the credits, I adjusted the progression a bit and played it differently and bam! It worked! Yay! I am so tired! I'm gonna go get peer reviewed. Goodbye.

editing day 1

 Sat my butt down and decided to do a majority of the editing today and save all the audio work for tomorrow. Really straightforward day to be frank, I started editing at around 3PM and finished around 8. Long, yea, but straightforward. Did make some changes during editing, like cutting the Protagonist's line about his eye being infected. It was a cute character moment but it felt out of place and due to how shooting day turned out, the cutting between the Protagonist and Cricket and Jim was too jarring due to the lighting differences. So just cut it out all together and saved some more time. 

I made the film's aspect ratio 4:3, it's not only a style/aesthetic decision but also serves the purpose of the eyepatch, representing the Protagonist's narrow view on life. I was gonna have it change to a standard aspect ratio once he revives himself but it looked too jarring to make a change like that while everything else production wise remains the same so I decided against it, but who knows I might go back on this eventually. Also I had mentioned wanting to use color correction to correct the difference in color (no way right) and lighting between certain shots but I realized that this is pretty much impossible for the most part. The issue is the lighting itself, it's too different between the shots so color correcting wouldn't do much to fix it. Still, color correction may help in some cases so I do think I'll try to do that when I have access to Premiere. 

One really not straightforward thing I did was the Parent Trap / Liv & Maddie split twin effect thing. I wanted a shot of the Protagonist looking at his body while both himself and his body are in the same shot and I knew about this editing trick where you keep the same shot exactly the same and still while shooting two parts of a scene, one with each double person. I don't know if that makes sense. Basically you shoot the scene twice for each twin and then splice the shot down the middle so you can have both in the same frame. And somehow I managed to do it. I am reasonably proud. Shot composition was kinda scuffed thought so I’m not entirely in the frame unfortunately but still cool!

Used the same font for the credits as I did for the business card and yeah that's pretty much it. Like I said, super straightforward. Audio will not be as straightforward but I'll get to that tomorrow.

redirect!

 I tried downloading premiere pro on my home computer so I could get all the editing done before going back to school after break but wouldn’t you know my computer does not have enough space for premiere. It’s a bit old so I didn’t think it was possible to clear up space and I honestly took it as a blessing in disguise. I’m out of my area of expertise using premiere and it would’ve been just too much to learn in too little time so I decided to redirect to editing on CapCut on my phone. Is it the best editing software? God no. Is it dependable? I think so and I actually know how to use it. I still may end up using premiere for any fancier editing I need to do, like color correction and all that. But as of right now I’m editing the whole thing on CapCut. Got a bit of the film down and it’s not turning out too bad! Placing everything where it needs to be now then I’ll work more on audio stuff. Not home at the moment nor do I have a lot of time to work on this till later in the week so that’s when I’ll do that.

i dont know how to use adobe

 I tried to get some editing in during class before break since I want to edit everything during the break, and almost immediately I realized I’m not 100% sure what I’m doing on Premier Pro. I usually just use CapCut on my phone to edit everything and I know Pro is what you’re supposed to use and it’s one of the best editing software out there but I just never could get into it. Anyway I got a few seconds into the film while editing before class ended and right when I saved the project I got hit with the red media not found screen so the whole project practically went into the can.

I don’t know what I even did wrooooongggggg… I’m gonna try editing again at home and I’ll watch some videos to be extra sure I know what I’m doing. It’s not like I don’t I’d just like to know more. Hopefully I don’t have to pivot and switch editing softwares or anything but yeah. Finishing editing this week and next week then focusing heavily on print and social media.

filming. 8 hour work day, no pay

 Filmed everything. EVERYTHING. I am so tired. My legs hurt. I am so tired. 

Started the day off by filming the montage of the Protagonist rotting in his room by myself, it went well, got everything I needed. Then I had stomach pain out of no where that I really just balled through. I made that fake blood thing, I used corn starch, flour, red food coloring, and blue food coloring then mixed them all together and it turned out super amazing. I did not expect it to turn out that well but it did! Got the blood recipe from this video on YouTube. I lathered a part of the hoodie in blood since that is where Cricket and Jim ripped out his heart from. I would put the blood in my mouth and spit it out later on.

Then my cast and crew started showing up at around 1:45 and everyone got here at 2:10ish. I gave Luis, who played Jim, a blazer and Ayami, playing Cricket, a tie and then I showed everyone what we were doing and how to handle the equipment. And then we kinda just started! Got through everything rather efficiently. I wanted to be done by 6 since Ayami and Ale, camera operator, had to leave at 6, so to be sure we got everything with Cricket and Jim, we skipped over some scenes to shoot later. Eventually, Ayami and Ale had to leave, which left me, Luis, and Julien (sound then camera operator) to do everything else. What was left over was more than I expected but it wasn't too bad, though because we shot later in the day, the lighting changed which will be weird to cut from different lighting to different lighting in-between each shot, so that majorly sucks. Maybe I can color correct later on but who knows. Reshoots are possible but they are not something I particularly want to do, just something to keep in mind just in case. 

Pictures from the shoot day :D

(Would have gotten a haircut before filming but there wasn't any space :cry:)

Finished around 8 which was way later than I wanted to finish, I was very very tired. Looking back, the major issue was the time constraints since many shots HAD to be done before a specific time. This led to some confusion on what still had to be filmed and continuity errors. Now that I'm more knowledgeable on how long this type of stuff takes to film, in the future I will plan more accordingly haha. Also to avoid confusion, I think I should have made a shot list. I was using the storyboards as a take-off point on what we had to film but it was often difficult to navigate. Shot list really would have helped, that's a short-sight on my part, I was in over my head. But it was a successful shoot day for sure, I just I filmed everything and didn't forget something because THAT would SUCK! This is not foreshadowing.